“NewsWrap"
for the week ending February 23, 2008
(As broadcast on "This Way Out" program #1,039, distributed 2-25-08)
[Written by Greg Gordon, with thanks to Rex Wockner with Bill Kelley]
Reported this week by Rick Watts and Greg Gordon
It's not clear if the resignation of Cuba's leader Fidel Castro this week, and the assumption of power by his brother Raúl, portends an improvement in the lives of the country's LGBT population - but there have been signs of change in the past few months.
In November, Raúl's daughter Mariela Castro Espín, director of Cuba's National Center for Sex Education, said her father supports letting gays serve openly in the military.
In December, two Havana lesbians were symbolically married in the courtyard of Castro Espín's sex education center - a first-ever same-gender union to receive support from a government agency.
And Cuba's Culture Minister Abel Prieto recently expressed support for same-gender marriage, according to a February 6th report in the “Miami Herald”. "I think that marriage between lesbians, between homosexuals, can be perfectly approved,” he told the newspaper, “and that in Cuba that wouldn't cause an earthquake or anything like that."
But who's at fault for a recent series of earthquakes in Israel, Lebanon and Syria? Gay people, of course, according to Shlomo Benizri of the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party in Israel's parliament, or Knesset. Four tremors rattled the region in November and December, and two more shook the area last week.
During a discussion this week of earthquake preparedness, Benizri told his Knesset colleagues that aside from reinforcing buildings, "A cost-effective way of averting earthquake damage would be to stop passing legislation on how to encourage homosexual activity in the State of Israel, which anyways causes earthquakes."
His comments have been widely ridiculed around the world, but Mike Hammel, who chairs Israel's Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Association said that “it is flattering that he attributes supernatural powers to us."
Another Shas M.K., Nissim Ze'ev, said earlier this month that "homosexuals [are] poisoning society," and that "homolesbianism legitimize[s] the state of Israel's 'self destruction.'" His party has also been trying to enact legislation banning LGBT Pride events in Jerusalem.
Several other members of the Knesset are calling for the Shas Party to censure both Benizri and Ze'ev for their comments.
The announcement this week by Ian Paisley, Junior that he's resigning from the Northern Ireland Executive has been cheered by groups working for queer equality there.
Paisley, Junior told “Hotpress” magazine in a May 2007 interview that lesbians and gay men harm society and that he's “repulsed” by them.
He was appointed a junior minister in the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister by his father, Democratic Unionist First Minister Ian Paisley, Senior, and represents North Antrim in the Northern Ireland Assembly.
His department is ironically responsible for equality issues.
Paisley, Junior's resignation was prompted by allegations that he lobbied on behalf of a property developer in a 50-million-pound government land deal. He denies any wrongdoing and said he'll remain at his post until a replacement is appointed.
Despite calls for him to apologize or resign for his homophobic comments, he said in a subsequent Radio 4 interview that his views were supported by the Bible, and that he was entitled to express them.
But a legal oversight group in Spain has decided that a judge is not entitled to impose his personal views of morality in court. Judge Fernando Ferrín Calamita ruled last year that a mother couldn't properly raise her children if she stayed with her lesbian partner. Her husband had discovered her in a compromising position with the woman. During divorce proceedings the judge awarded him custody of the couple's two daughters. "The mother will have to chose between her daughters and her new partner," Judge Calamita ruled in June 2007. "It's impossible that two homosexual parents can give a child complete education."
The body that supervises the judiciary in Spain, the General Council for Judicial Power, has suspended Calamita, and said his behavior is under investigation.
In a statement this week the Spanish Federation of Gays, Lesbians, Transsexuals and Bisexuals noted that "since the arrival of legal gay marriage in Spain... the law states that the custody of a child should be decided independently of the sexual orientation of the parent."
Judge Ferrín is also infamous for condemning topless swimming and nudists.
Almost a thousand young people and other supporters paid tribute this week to 15-year-old Lawrence King, the Oxnard, California student shot to death by a classmate last week.
Marchers carried hastily made poster boards with such messages as “RIP Larry King,” “Gay Pride” and “Support Love and Tolerance.”
Two Hueneme High School sophomores put the event together in just three days, and were surprised by the turnout. “We were expecting maybe 100 or 200 people,” 16-year-old Courtney LaForest told the “Los Angeles Times.” “This is incredible.”
Jerry Dannenberg, Superintendent of the Hueneme School District, joined the marchers. “We forget the goodness that is in most of our kids,” he said. “This tremendous turnout by kids is an expression of their voices, their opinions.”
King, an eighth-grader at the district's E.O. Green Junior High School, came out as gay this school year, and in recent weeks had been accessorizing his school uniform with feminine items, to the chagrin of many other students. Shortly after the shooting, his organs were donated to several recipients after doctors declared him brain dead and took him off life support.
A 12-year-old classmate, Erin Mings, told the “Times” that King was an outgoing and funny kid who stood his ground. “When people came up and started punking him,” she said, “he just stood up for himself.”
The alleged shooter, 14-year-old Brandon McInerney, was reportedly upset by King's admission that he had a crush on him. He's been charged with premeditated murder and prosecutors say he'll be tried as an adult. He faces up to 50 years to life in prison, in addition to a hate crime allegation that could add another one to three years.
Democratic California state Assemblymember Mike Eng said this week that he'll introduce a bill that would require schools to implement a mandatory tolerance class as part of the curriculum. The legislation would also provide training for teachers to help them identify "symptoms of hate". Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a similar bill last year.
"No matter where people fall on the gay rights issue, they have to feel extremely shocked and saddened by this," Eng told the “San Gabriel Valley Tribune”. "As one student put it, `I don't advocate the gay lifestyle, but you shouldn't be shot for who you are.'"
In other U.S. news this week, a commission established to study same-gender civil unions in New Jersey has concluded that they create a "second-class status" for those couples.
The civil union law was enacted in 2006 in response to a state Supreme Court order that lesbigay partners be given the same legal protections as heterosexually married couples. The ruling gave lawmakers the option of calling them marriage or civil unions, and they opted for the latter.
The commission was created as part of the law to review how it was working. Its report this week, as widely expected, largely echoed testimony at three public hearings it held last year. Several couples in civil unions told the commission that they weren't being treated the way married couples are by government agencies, employers and other institutions.
Democratic Governor Jon Corzine has said he's willing to sign a marriage equality bill into law at some point, but doesn't want it to become a wedge issue before the presidential election in November.
Jason Bartlett, an African-American Connecticut state representative, announced this week that he's gay.
The 41-year-old Democrat told the “Danbury News-Times” that while he's been “out” to his family, "this is about having a conversation with my larger family - the people of greater Danbury who voted for me." He was first elected to his district, which is 96 percent white, in 2006.
The National Black Justice Coalition reports that Bartlett becomes one of only six openly gay African-American elected officials in the United States, and the Victory Fund, which assists LGBT candidates, says he's the country's first such state legislator.
We reported last week that a lesbian couple in the Australian state of Queensland, Sharon Dane and Elaine Crump, were allowed to file a Notice of Intended Marriage on Valentine's Day with the state's Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages. They were told by sympathetic Registry official Colin Wood that the filing would be valid for 18 months, if the country's marriage laws were revised to allow their union during that time - not a likely prospect.
But this week Registrar General David Mackie told the “Melbourne Community Voice” that the notice should not have been filed “because you can't accept an invalid document... It shouldn't have happened and we won't be practicing this again in the future.”
Dane told the newspaper that “Colin Wood... is now on leave, and we don't know if that's willingly or unwillingly.”
But finally, venerable Canadian LGBT civil rights activist Reverend Brent Hawkes was invested this week into the Order of Canada. It's the country's highest civilian honor, created in 1967 to recognize a lifetime of outstanding achievement, dedication to community and service to the nation. More than 5,000 people from all sectors of society have been invested into the Order, but he may be the first queer activist to be so honored.
Hawkes has for more than 30 years been the senior pastor at the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto. His wedding service for two same-gender couples in 2001 sparked what became the successful battle for civil marriage equality in the country. He performed the ceremony wearing a bulletproof vest following a series of threats on his life.
Hawkes legally married his own longtime partner John Sproule in 2006.
- - - - - - Late-breaking Oscars news - - - - - -
Joining the Coen brothers for “No Country For Old Men,” Best Picture Oscar co-producer Scott Rudin ended his acceptance speech by thanking his husband - though we don't know if he calls him that - saying, “Honey, without you this would just be hardware.” Also among the 80th annual Academy Awards, Director Cynthia Wade and producer Vanessa Roth picked up the Best Documentary Short Subject trophy for “Freeheld,” about the heart-wrenching struggle of terminally ill lesbian New Jersey Police Detective Laurel Hester to have her pension, which would automatically be inherited by a heterosexual spouse, transferred to her domestic partner.
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